Some economists see one variable that could hold back Friday's jobs report. One variable. They found one thing that might affect a number that gets revised three times anyway.
The variable could be weather. Or seasonal adjustments. Or the fact that surveys are conducted mid-month and people lie to government agencies for sport. The article doesn't specify because specificity would ruin the tension.
Investors are preparing to respond to this number by doing what they were already planning to do but with more conviction. If the number is high, the Fed stays hawkish and stocks go down. If the number is low, the economy is collapsing and stocks go down. If the number is exactly what analysts expect, the market will tank because nothing interesting happened and algos get bored.
Retail traders are currently Googling "what is NFP" and setting stop losses at levels they saw in a YouTube thumbnail. They will wake up Friday morning, check the number on their Robinhood news feed, and make a trade based on a headline they didn't finish reading. By 9:35 AM they will be down 18% and tweeting about manipulation.
The jobs report comes out at 8:30 AM Eastern. By 8:31 AM, seventeen different narratives will exist. By 8:45 AM, the number will be memory-holed. By Monday, the market will be trading on something a Fed governor said at a community college in Indiana.
One variable. Could hold back the number. Not will. Could. This is the journalism equivalent of saying a butterfly in Tokyo could affect your commute.
The economists who see this variable spent six years in graduate school to identify one thing that might make one number different from another number that nobody will remember by October.
Photo by Hennie Stander on Unsplash
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